Distribution of multimedia video (also referred to herein as “media” and/or “program(s)”), such as movies and the like, from network services to a client device, may be achieved through adaptive bitrate streaming of the video. Prior to streaming, the video may be encoded at different bitrates and resolutions into multiple bitrate streams that are stored in the network services. Typically, each of the bitstreams includes time-ordered segments of encoded video.
Adaptive bitrate streaming includes determining an available streaming bandwidth at the client device, and then downloading a selected one of the different bitrate streams from the network services to the client device based on the determined available bandwidth. While streaming, the client device downloads and buffers the successive encoded video segments associated with the selected bitstream. The client device decodes the buffered encoded video segments to recover the video therein, and then plays back the recovered video on the client device, e.g., in audio-visual form.
In normal playback, the client device plays back the video recovered from each of the buffered segments in the order in which the video was originally encoded, i.e., in a forward direction. The client device may offer playback modes or features in addition to normal playback. Such additional playback features may include rewind, fast forward, skip, and so on, as is known.
The additional playback features are referred to herein as trick play features. In order to implement trick play features, such as rewind, the client device requires access to video that has already been played. Therefore, the client device may be required to store large amounts of already downloaded and played video in order to meet the demands of a selected trick play feature. However, many client devices, especially small, hand-held devices, have limited memory capacity and, therefore, may be unable to store the requisite amount of video.
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